Jon Wilner: Pac-10 faces a big challenge

Expanding the Pac-10 Conference for the first time in three decades was easy. Now comes the hard part: Dividing it up.

The 12-member league must split into two divisions for football, thus jeopardizing the future of rivalries that pre-date World War I.

Fortunately, the league has time to resolve the complicated, emotional issue: Utah doesn't start play until the fall of 2011, and Colorado might not join until '12.

Commissioner Larry Scott will discuss options with the league's athletic directors in late July but doesn't expect resolution until the fall — unless, as he put it, "there's an emerging consensus."

Don't hold your breath.

Adopting the division format means separating the California schools . . . or splitting the natural rivals . . . or lumping Colorado and Utah with the Northwest schools — and each option is sure to encounter stiff resistance from one faction or another.

The source of the dilemma is an NCAA rule requiring conferences to have at least 12 members and two divisions in order to stage a football championship game. Given that the event is worth at least $10 million annually — it's one of the reasons the Pac-10 expanded in the first place — it's highly unlikely that the conference would opt against divisions, no matter how unseemly the choices.

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The first sign of gathering angst came after Colorado athletic director Mike Bohn told the Denver Post that his school had been assured a spot in the "South" division, along with Utah and the Arizona and Los Angeles schools. (Colorado's largest out-of-state alumni base is in Southern California.)

It did not take long for Bohn's comment to reach Pac-10 campuses —They've already decided how to split the league!?!? — or for the existing members to voice their displeasure to the conference office.

Scott was pressed on the matter last week, when Utah joined the league, and tried to sooth any frayed nerves. "We haven't decided yet," he said. "There's a process we'll now go through."

Splitting the league in a North-South manner, with Utah and Colorado in the South, is one obvious solution with two gigantic flaws:

It separates the four California schools — two of which, Cal and UCLA, are part of the same university system — and it cuts the Northwest off from the fertile recruiting ground of Los Angeles.

"Everyone is potentially concerned about not playing the Southern California schools every year," Scott said. "Granted, I was a history major, not a math major. But I haven't figured out how everyone can play the Southern California schools every year in a 12-team league.

"But everyone recognizes that there are trade-offs to the division structure."

There's another option, one proposal (by yours truly) on the Mercury News' college sports blog: The "Zipper Plan."

Instead of a North-South separation, you'd split the natural rivals: Cal and Stanford would be in different divisions, for instance — but with the assurance that all the ancient rivalries (The Big Game, Civil War, Apple Cup, etc.) would take place every year.

Basically, we're talking about something like this:

Washington State, Oregon, Stanford, USC, Arizona State and Colorado in one division.

Washington, Oregon State, Cal, UCLA, Arizona and Utah in the other.

Every team would play its five division opponents, plus its natural rival and three of the remaining five teams from the other division (on a rotating basis).

The Zipper Plan preserves two important California rivalries: the sister schools, UCLA and Cal, would be paired together, as would the private schools, Stanford and USC, which collided for the first time in 1905.

The Zipper also allows Cal-USC and Stanford-UCLA to meet three years out of every five.

And it ensures that every school gets a trip to, or visit from, one of the Southern California teams every year. (Home dates against USC and UCLA are important for ticket-selling purposes.)

Admittedly, the Zipper Plan isn't perfect. But perfection isn't possible unless the league shuns the division format — and the $10 million championship game.

The goal should be to divide the league in a manner that's palatable to as many schools as possible. Compared to that, expansion was cake.